So Was Shinji
by Aki-Chan04
Summary: My first try at EVAfic... A stream-of-thought piece from Shinji's POV, just after he kills Kaworu... And now there's more!
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: I don't own EVA, and consequently don't own anyone in this story. sigh Oh well....   
  
  
So Was Shinji  
  
  
Yeah, I remember sitting on the beach that day. And you were there too, only I wasn't sure if I really wanted you there or not. I know you didn't want to be alone - I know you hate being alone, even though when you want to really torture yourself, you go off and shut yourself away. But you were there, anyway, and I was there and I didn't know what to do anymore.   
  
It should've been me. I knew it should've been me, and nothing you or anyone else - not even him - could have told me would have made a difference to my mind. To the me in my mind, the part of myself that knew that he was better than I was. That even though I had only known him for a couple of days - the blink of an eye, really, in the big grand scheme of things that I'll never really know or understand - that even though I didn't know him for that long that he was still always better than I was. That even though he was gone, he shouldn't have been. It should've been me.   
  
I was protecting you. I was protecting you all, them all, us all. Protecting us from the enemy. From the Angels. Why are our enemies Angels? I never understood that, just like I never understood a lot of things. I just accepted it because you, because my father, because Asuka told me so. Because. Because because because.   
  
Because isn't good enough anymore.   
  
I remember the ocean rolling in and out and I remembered the tears I couldn't cry, not for Rei, not for him. Not because I didn't want to. Because they wouldn't come. I don't know why. But they wouldn't, not even when your tears for Kaji wouldn't stop. I just shut myself away when you cried, shut myself away like you shut yourself away and wished to some God that I didn't believe in anymore to make things better, or to at least make things go away. To make me numb. Like when I merged with Eva. Like when I wasn't really me anymore, like when I was a part of something else and there was this thing inside my head that I finally understood.   
  
And then I heard you, somewhere far away but coming closer, screaming. Screaming loud, screaming, "Give me back my Shinji!"   
  
Who is this person, your Shinji? Is he me? Is he someone else, a Shinji that only exists within your mind? One of the Shinjis that amounts to the whole only in the end, when all of humanity is seen from above as one big mind trying to fill in the holes that can't be filled? Is that me, is that who I am to you, is that who I am to the world?   
  
I don't know who I am anymore. But that's not true because I know that I never knew who I was. No one ever did and no one ever will, because I'm not even really here.   
  
There is no Shinji.   
  
Who am I, again? Where am I, again?  
  
I remember the beach, and the stars and the surf rolling in and out, and I remember that you were there only I didn't know if I really wanted you there or not. But you were there anyway.   
  
And so was Shinji. 


	2. 

Author's Note: Okay, so there wasn't supposed to be more

Author's Note: Okay, so there wasn't supposed to be more. But then I got a writing assignment and, well… here's more. ;)

Disclaimer: I don't own EVA or any of the peoples associated with it. That's probably a good thing, or think of the issues I would have…

So Was Shinji

Part 2

It was a cool day; it didn't feel like winter was in the air. Sometimes he was able to forget that winter was coming, he thought as he looked out over the sandy beach, the tans and browns of the sand stretching into the eternity of the blue-black sea. He'd always liked the sea. It made him feel warm and welcome, like he was being reborn. No, that wasn't it, he realized. It made him feel like he hadn't been born yet. 

He couldn't shake the feeling that maybe, before people were born, they knew everything. That maybe they were at peace with the universe, and it was only through birth that they fell out of synch with everything. That all of life, from birth to death, was just a futile, too-short struggle to regain that feeling of completeness.

He didn't know if people found it again when they died. 

The waves lapped softly on the shore, rolling in and out as he stood just at the water's edge. His feet were bare below his cutoff jeans, hands stuck in the pockets and white shirttails blowing in the wind. He could feel the folded piece of paper in his pocket onto which he'd spilled all the thoughts in his head. All his anger scratched out on a piece of while, lineless paper, the words scrawled in an unsteady hand and written in dull black ink. He had needed a medium, and the paper had somehow provided one. A way to make his feelings into words that made sense in the language of humanity. 

The wind ruffled his already unkempt brown hair; the sand whipped in his eyes, causing

them to tear. He pulled one hand out of his pocket and ran the back of it across his cheeks, wiping the sand induced tears away. The sun had just set, and the velvety sky was just coming to life under the heavens as star after star twinkled into existence. 

He was lonely. In fact, he didn't feel like there was one person on the planet that was more alone than he was at this moment. Right now it was just him and the sand and the sea and the stars, and the rest of humanity was somewhere outside his sphere of existence. And that was the way he liked it. 

It wasn't that Shinji didn't like people. It was just that he didn't like losing them. And he had already lost too many. Both his father and his mother had been lost to him since he was far too young; his life was wrought with loss, and he was sick of it. 

Now Kaworu was lost to him, having died before he had even really lived. It hurt Shinji,

knowing that he was dead, that the only person he had let into his own little world for years had, indeed, followed the trend and left. He had known the boy for a matter of days, but Kaworu had gotten to him like no one had before. And now his loss had left Shinji cold and alone and even more willing to believe that the only constant in life was, truly, death.

_You don't understand how he left mehere, left me in this noise and left me hanging here, half-completed._

He was only fourteen – just a child, he thought. But so much had happened to him in the

past few months… His world had been turned upside-down within an hour. When Misato came, when she told him he was special and that his father – no, NERV, really – wanted him, wanted to see what he could do. His father had passed Shinji off to live with a teacher while he buried himself in his work. It hadn't been until Shinji had shown the very traits that he sought that Gendo

Ikari had seemed to notice that he had a son. And nothing had been the same after that. He had been shoved into a sea of people: people wanting to see what he could do, people wanting to make friends with him, people telling him he had to work well with Rei and then Asuka because their entire project depended on it. Because humanity depended on it.

Nothing should depend on him, Shinji thought, kicking a flat, grey rock out into the ocean with his bare foot. When things depended on him, they fell apart. It was as simple as that. People needed to learn that, he thought. He just couldn't be what they wanted him to be, and things didn't work once they found that out. 

NERV had thought he was special – that he was talented and that only he could pilot the EVA unit. Shinji didn't think so – he was scared of piloting, so scared that he found himself shaking every time he slipped into his plug suit, saw his hands shake in the mirror each time he clipped his headgear on. Each time the entry plug was inserted, he felt like he was being sent to his death. 

But then, once the cockpit had filled with fluid, it was different. He was reborn back into the womb, he was alive again and he was connected to the rest of the world. His vision was sharper, his hearing more astute, his thoughts flashed by behind his eyes at lightning speed. He was *alive* and aware and in control of the world, because that cockpit was all he knew and that was the world as far as he cared. His own world. 

It was addictive, and that scared him. He liked being in control, feeling his fear slide off him like an unwanted skin as the cool fluid encased him, opening his eyes to the color behind the black and white world he looked at every day.

And then his mission would finish, or they would complete their tests, and the cockpit

would be drained and he was thrust back out into the world, only quietly this time; he would never say anything as he climbed out of the cockpit, as he shuffled back to the locker room to shower and change. He didn't like being shoved back out into the dry, cold world where people were separate entities that tried to understand each other and failed miserably. 

And Misato would be waiting for him, waiting to slap him on the back and say in her too-loud voice how great he was, and to drive him home to their apartment and microwave some ramen for dinner and drink her beer and then ask him why he went to bed so early. Shinji always went to bed early, more out of boredom than anything else. He didn't necessarily sleep – he just went to bed. He liked lying in the sheets, feeling the flannel against his bare legs, headphones

plugged in and soft classical playing on repeat on his discman. 

She didn't understand. She didn't understand that Kaworu was gone. Well, Shinji reasoned, she knew he was gone. They all knew Kaworu had died. But he was *gone*, Shinji thought as he looked out over the blackening sea as it reflected the endless ebony heavens

above it. Endless sea beneath endless heavens. The world was an endless stream of consciousness, of human thoughts that never stopped and never slowed down and never fell silent for Shinji. They were always whispering at him, always, even when he turned the volume up so loud that all he thought he could hear was Pachelbel's Canon in D. Even then, the voices were there, humanity whispering at him, reminding him that he was just one of a thousand individuals and not a piece of a whole. 

Kaworu was a piece of the whole, now, Shinji thought. Kaworu's mind had been silenced to the rush of human thought, it had transcended into the quiet that the water provided, the quiet that pervaded before people were born. While they were still connected. 

At least, that's what Shinji wanted to believe. He didn't want to believe that Kaworu was

gone. His best friend – was Kaworu, had Kaworu been his best friend? – had not just ceased to exist. That wasn't right. The world couldn't be that cruel in death, not after it was so cruel in life. Shinji refused to believe that. Kaworu was alive – more alive than he had even been, his mind perfectly attuned to the universe like it never could have been outside the womb. He had been

reborn into a pre-birth, and Shinji only wished he could follow him into the forgiving silence. 

The waves lapped at the shore, running over the boy's toes as he stood in the upwelling

tide, watching the round white moon rise over the glassy water, seemingly full as the half that had just risen was reflected by the cold, black water. He shivered in the cooler breeze, once again remembering that it was fall, not spring. A time for death. Rebirth would not come until the spring. 

Maybe Kaworu would be reborn again, maybe he and Shinji would meet again someday in a different time, a different place. Maybe Shinji would be wiser then, maybe he would be a part of a whole instead of an isolated individual lost in the sea of people around him. Maybe then, things wouldn't be so bad. 

Maybe Shinji would be whole then, be a person then. 

Maybe Shinji would be happy then. 

The ghost of a smile traced across his lips in the cool moonlight. _Maybe_, he thought. _Maybe then, maybe someday, Kaworu._

The boy turned and began padding, barefoot, silently up the beach, heading slowly back

towards the lights, the human life of Tokyo-3. Back into the sea of people and thoughts and noise. Back into the world, reborn just as the stars had been, twinkling back into human existence and fading out of the dream that was his moonlit beach where he could be alone.

Kaworu had been willing to accept his fate. 

And so,now, was Shinji.


End file.
